Another large patch coming by mid-August for NCAA Football 11 will address some notorious balance issues with recruiting in the game's Dynasty modes, and deliver "live tuning" for necessary gameplay adjustments without waiting for a dedicated patch.

Folks may already have noticed the "Tuning" category in the file management menu of the main game. There's nothing in it yet, but this is where Live Tuning Packages will live once they roll in a couple of weeks. An official blog post by EA Sports today says that tuning will allow for the management and control of "thousands of key parameters," from gameplay to environmental appearances, such as the intensity of shadowing.

Although this is also being addressed directly in the patch, a big key will be its ability to fine-tune dynasty recruiting AI, because many have noticed bot-controlled powerhouses coming in exceptionally underweight with repeated lackluster recruiting classes. Overall, the big benefit seems to be the responsiveness to game issues. "We can often turn changes around in a few days," EA Sports wrote. "It can't solve everything, and some issues will still require a traditional client update, but for many items it's definitely a more powerful and faster strategy for tuning throughout the season."

Other fixes coming in the patch will knock down defensive line athleticism - many were seeing too many interceptions by the trench fighters. It'll solve some online issues, such as a leadership exploit and potential crashes during team selection, and also the nutball things some (including me) have seen happen on play-action passes, like the quarterback hauling ass for his own end zone after the fake.

Finally, of note, the team says it put a ton of work into degradable uniforms over the course of the game but "we broke something in a final build that made the impact way too subtle." They've solved that to help make the game even better looking. That picture above is taken from the game itself. To me, it looks almost like one of those limited-edition paintings the alumni associations and booster clubs are always hawking for a grand.

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Again, two to three weeks - mid-August - is the expected delivery time. Official dates will be announced later.